Shannen Doherty and her evil dead twin? It’s ‘Mari-Kari,’ and it might get bloody
This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.
EXCLUSIVE FIRST LOOK
Sometimes you hear the single-sentence concept behind a new animated series and you just smirk and say, ‘Yeah, OK, I’ll take a look at that.’
That was my reaction when I first heard about ‘Mari-Kari,’ a twisted bit of humor from the fiendish folks at FEARnet. The premise of the series, which premieres June 3: Shannen Doherty voices the roles of identical twin sisters Mari and Kari, who are cute and lively grade-school students -- well, Mari is probably a bit more lively considering that Kari happens to be a dead, blue-faced, vengeful apparition who slaughters anyone who messes with her sister.
It’s sort of like the Olsen twins, circa 1989, mashed up with ‘The Sixth Sense’ and ‘The Fairly Odd Parents.’ And did we mention it’s Shannen Doherty?
Here, for the first time anywhere, is a look at the show...
‘Mari-Kari’ will start off with eight one- to two-minute episodes built in Flash and influenced, as you can see, by the anime sector. Jody Schaeffer is the director as well as the writer and creator. Executive producers are Austin Reading and Jim Burns. Keith Fay also serves as a writer for the series.
It’s cute looking, but it’s going be somewhat nasty, violence-wise, more than the general-audience trailer above suggests; it will be all splattery and gross but in a cartoonish way, which is the juxtaposition that the creators hope will make it a subversive treat, not unlike, say, Happy Tree Friends. Time will tell...
The animation company behind ‘Mari-Kari’ is Liquid Theory of Los Angeles, a production house that has done quite a bit of short-film, montage and animation work with MTV, Spike TV and VH1 and has worked with U2 on several occasions, including the intro piece for their the halftime performance at Super Bowl XXXVI.
Anyway, as for ‘Mari-Kari,’ check back here for Yvonne Villarreal’s upcoming interview with Doherty, which will be running right around that June 3 premiere date.
-- Geoff Boucher
RECENT AND RELATED
Seth Green on the special sauce of ‘Robot Chicken’ and ‘Star Wars’
Trey Parker on the ‘South Park’ movie sequel
MacFarlane: ‘Family Guy’ may return to Dark Side of the Force
Bart’s blackboard: 10 best sentences from ‘Simpsons’ opening
Al Jean on his five favorite ‘Simpsons’ guest stars